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12/01/2008

In a particularly venomous Thanksgiving-themed article, that lil' sweet potato known as Peter LaBarbera says many nasty things about gay folks. He tries to deny gays' their right to both God and Thanksgiving, attempts to strip the civil rights worthiness from the LGBT community's fight, and continues the general tone of hostility that has come to define his long career in anti-gay activism. It's both maddening and saddening.

However, for the sake of both time and our own ability to keep down the food that we consumed over the long weekend, we are just going to look at one small portion of Pete's piece. Particularly, we want to look at the following "challenge," in which Pete solicits "proof" that 'rosexual and 'mosexual marriages deserve equal footing:

So here’s a challenge to our homosexual critics: prove that same-sex “marriages” are EQUAL to the real deal given their procreative deficit, or stop this nonsense about “marriage equality.” (I understand that this is an unrealistic request; if homosexuals and their liberal allies cared about the real meaning of words, they wouldn’t have called homosexual unions “marriage” in the first place.) As my friend John Shepard writes, “Aristotle may have been the first in recorded history to say in his Politics, ‘It is unjust to treat unequal things as equal.’ This is why it is patently unfair to treat homosexual sex as marriage. Heterosexuality is intrinsic to marriage. Marriage is consummated by heterosexuality, not sodomy.”

Our response:

Your challenge? Easy, Pete: We gay "critics" will just remind you of the fact -- not opinion, but fact -- that procreation is simply not a marital requirement. In your religious view of marriage, procreation might very well be a crucial element, and that is totally fine. As we've said ten billion and six times, no organized movement is working to deny you of your own personal religious beliefs regarding the nuptial subject. But what we are fighting for is the civil marriage contract, which gives gay couples legal parity with their heterosexual counterparts. And if you seriously want to bring procreation into that civil mix, then rather than push for marriage bans, you should instead be fighting for our states to make child-rearing a post-"I do" must.

Now, does taking the kid element out of it really "prove" that gay couples are just as worthy as straights? Well, no. Just like having kids doesn't make a heterosexual couple any more marriage-worthy than a pair of childless straights, a gay couples' diapered or non-diapered status does nothing to validate or negate the duo's legally-recognized bond. That's because the kid argument is a silly straw man that should, frankly, be laughed out of the courts (both of law and public opinion). Just like religion, it is a conservation that should, nay, MUST be detached from the civil -- CIVIL, CIVIL, did we mention CIVIL? -- marriage equality discourse!

But what DOES "prove" gay couples' worthiness? Well...

(a)They pay equal taxes as their heterosexual peers(b)They live under the same constitutional guarantees and protections as their heterosexual peers(c)They have clear and demonstrable family units, the likes of which undeniably benefit from equal marriage access
(d)They throw nice receptions which typically consist of open bars with premium spirits
(e) They have more than demonstrated their right to equal access. More and bigger courts are siding with fairness, a trend that will surely continue as time continues its unrelenting forward march.
Just to name a few. THESE are the sorts of issues up for debate. THESE are the matters at hand. As for the ability to have a child and then have said child Baptized/confirmed/circumcised at a bris? These are side conservations that, regardless of our personal attachment or concerns, are not barriers that any of us have a right to use for the purpose of denying gays' civil equality!

**Oh, and that Aristotle quip? It is a misquote that, in a reliably anti-intellectual fashion, has been WILDLY de-contextualized! If you really want to read Politics, in full, you can do so here.

Your thoughts

Peter's challenge is heartless and cruel. It ignores the well proven and illustrated fact that gays and lesbians, regardless what you think of them, have very real feelings and very deep and loving relationships. Peter doesn't like to talk about that too much. It is a shame Peter can't see how cruel and mean his words are.

I can tell him that my relationship has lasted much longer and is much happier than most of the current trends for heterosexual marriages. I am just as much in love and just as happy to be with my partner as I was the day we met. If Labarbera can't see that my love for my partner is equal, it is because he has ignored my humanity for his own hateful agenda.